Get your e-shop ready for the Christmas season

Are you looking for Christmas marketing campaign ideas to adopt in your online store? That is awesome! And not just because we all like gifts, data shows that people also enjoy buying them. Moreover, they prefer to buy them in advance. Last year 68 percent of shoppers planned to begin holiday shopping before 25^th November (D. Tighe, 2022). Make sure your online store is ready in time for such an important retailer season! Start planning for your Christmas marketing campaign with us right now!

Marketing season highlights

First, you should know about the most important season events. You will not miss them from now on. These are mainly Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and pre-Christmas shopping in December. Check below why you should use them in your Christmas marketing campaign.

Christmas shopping season progression

• Halloween: this famous event is celebrated on October 31st, but we recommend running campaigns at least 3 days before. Originally a Scottish and Irish feast with an unmistakable atmosphere offers the creation of a visually impressive campaign. Coupled with a advantageous offer, this is something your customers will surely respond to.


• Black Friday: almost every e-shop tries to take advantage of this event, often it brings the highest volume of sales in the entire pre-Christmas period. For customers it is especially interesting for significant discounts. However, the competition is high, so we recommend launching the campaign for whole week – e.g., Black Friday week. Black Friday falls on November 25 this year.


• Cyber Monday: the period of the Black Friday and Cyber Monday weeks is the strongest in the whole Christmas season. Therefore, in addition to Black Friday campaigns, you should also prepare Cyber Monday campaigns. These campaigns can also run for the entire week from November 28.


• pre-Christmas shopping: a typical Christmas campaign is simply a must have. Not so strong anymore but still interesting period for your e-shop and for your customers. The ideal time to launch such campaigns is after the end of Cyber Monday campaigns.


• post-Christmas/New Year sale: It doesn’t end at Christmas! If you wanted to relax, don’t worry, this is certainly a much calmer period, but it is not worth forgetting it. Create a profitable post-Christmas campaign for customers.

Plan your promotion

So, how should your campaign look? First, define your goal for this holiday season. Goals are what moves us on our way, what drives us forward. And S.M.A.R.T goals are even better. The acronym S.M.A.R.T stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based goals.

According to this logic your S.M.A.R.T goal could be: To increase overall gross profits between October & December 2022 compared to the same time in 2021.

Plan your S.M.A.R.T goal

Got your goal? Then start the journey towards it by choosing some of these Christmas sales ideas we collected for you.

Christmas marketing ideas for online small businesses

• holiday contest and giveaways – e. g., open a photo contest on social sites or award your best/most active followers


• 12 days of Christmas sales campaign – each day you unveil a surprise new sale item


• promotion gift sets and bundles – create unique Christmas product packages


• flash sales – notify your customers via email or social media about super attractive deal for a limited time (days or hours)


• buy one, get one free (BOGO) – inform customers about BOGO sale when buying a specific product or products from a specific category


• free samples – do you need to introduce new product? Holiday season is a great chance plus people like to have something little for free


• sales for loyal customers – when else to reward your loyal customers than at Christmas?


• gift cards – an option which should always be there for your customers


• holiday wrapping with a personalized message – offer customization in packaging or even environmental one. It’s something you can impress your customers with


• gift guides – help your customers to buy an ideal gift, you can prepare gift guide by receiver (for Mom/Dad/Teacher), by category (for Adventurer/Animal lover) or price


• free shipping – in Webnode editor you can set free shipping for all orders or for orders above a certain amount


• set the clock ticking – wander how to emphasize urgency? Countdown timers are the answer


• coupon codes – good practice is to share them on social profiles or use them to reward loyal customers, you can also easily use them in Webnode editor


• cooperation with charity – environmental choices are relevant trend, which can be the reason why customers choose you

Now you need to decide which products to put together for gift sets and what you can offer as a desirable free sample. Take time to make a special discount for your prominent customers or create gift cards. Let your creativity flow but be realistic at the same time. Choose what you can handle. Do not forget you need to adjust your website’s design, product listing and other settings.

Adjust your website

Special gift sets are ready, you finished setting chosen discounts you can offer and even came up with a holiday contest or gift guide. Do not waste your effort and display your Christmas promotion ideas on your online store website!

Special product categories

Make sure that customers can quickly and easily find what they are looking for, but be mindful to leave space for undecided shoppers. Create new interesting and beneficial product categories corresponding to your special gift sets or gift guides. Maybe try something funny like Wine Snob, Sweet Tooth or People using the left side of the brain.

Add new keywords

The creation of new categories on the e-shop is also related to the addition of new keywords to texts and headings. This practice is useful for your SEO, but also website design. Customers should immediately recognize that you have an extra special Christmas offer. Here, be rather classic and use phrases such as “children’s toys for Christmas”, “Christmas toy sale”, “Black Friday children’s toys” or whatever is relevant to your focus.

Professional looking product pictures

Months before Christmas are a crucial part of the year for e-shops. When else then now is the time to show your products in the best light? High quality professional-looking photographs should support your work and also your Christmas promotion ideas. You can learn more about making a powerful online portfolio in our article here.

Do not forget about marketing helpers

Okay, your e-shop is ready and full of holiday content. Now let’s promote your products and hard work! In this chapter we will show how to use online marketing to ensure a successful holiday season.

Online Marketing

Christmas email campaign

If you’re already sending newsletters to your customers, it’s a great way to let them know about flash sale you currently run, holiday contests, new gift sets or gift cards you’ve created. For email marketing you can use MailChimp or similar services.

Blog posts

Blog posts are a standard way to share current offers and news with your customers. Here, instead of limited-time discounts or free shipping, focus on adding value to your customers lives. Only a small part should be about promoting your products. These type of blog posts also provide you with valuable content to use on social media or in an email campaign.

Social media

Social media platforms are great and interactive spaces where you can promote your Christmas marketing campaign and boost traffic on your website. You can share your contests, coupons, 12 days of Christmas sales campaign or post your worst singing of “Jingle Bells”. It’s up to you!

You can also embed social media feeds directly on your site. Check out Facebook page plugin or Instagram feed widget. To show an Instagram feed widget on your e-shop just add HTML code.

Remarketing

Do you know that feeling of your past product research that has been chasing you around online? We’ve all bumped into remarketing and even clicked on the offer at some point. At the time, it was exactly what we wanted, right? Remarketing can be an effective way to bring people back to your website after they leave and convert potential is not negligible.

Last checks

At this point you have set your goal, worked out with your digital marketing ideas for Christmas, added the necessary content to the website and started an email or social media campaign. Be proud of yourself! We are adding just a few more points that should not be forgotten in your consistent approach to this Christmas season.

Your contact channels

Check your contact details are actual and include as many contact channels as possible through which customers can connect with you. Make sure the contact information is easy to find and visible in several places on the site. You can also add them to the page header in the Webnode editor.

FAQ section

Also, do not forget you can answer a lot of customer questions and concerns by publishing a well-structured FAQ. The Webnode editor has prepared a special section for this, which will make your life easier.

Mobile version

Do you have some free time and use your mobile phone to search what to buy for your loved ones? Your customers do that too. The great news is that Webnode templates are automatically responsive. At the same time, we recommend testing your e-shop on a mobile device to ensure everything is all right.

SEO

Remember the holiday keywords we mentioned above? Well, SEO is a broad system that concerns search engine optimization. If you aren’t so sure on this topic, here you can find more.

Wondering how to create an online store? This step-by-step guide will help you out.